The Real Cost of Your Blue Jeans
The biggest fashion trend in recent years is "fast fashion"—the mass production of trendy, inexpensive clothing with lightning-quick turnaround. This is a hugely wasteful global, environmental and human rights disaster, according to bestselling journalist Dana Thomas in her new book Fashionopolis.
Making the industry's 80 billion garments per year requires huge amounts of water and toxic chemicals. It employs every sixth person on Earth—most in dangerous conditions for very little money. Fast fashion also produces mountains of clothes that go unsold or are discarded and end up in garbage dumps and landfills.
There is no single solution for these problems of ecological damage, exploitation and waste, but there is hope for the future. Consumers, retailers and innovators are pursuing a variety of options for sustainability, such as buying secondhand clothes; renting outfits; recycling clothes into new, reusable fibers; 3D printing clothes on demand; biofabrication; reshoring; and using organic and natural fibers. And just buying less.
Perhaps the worst offenders in terms of environmental and human damage are blue jeans. In this excerpt from , Thomas explores some of what ails the world's most popular garment of all—and one process that could help cure some of the
